We sat down with Hunter Turner, the current president of Manna U’s Student Government Association, and asked what student life here at Manna U means to him. Read on to find out what he had to say.
“Student life is about creating connectivity, involvement, and belonging within the student realm. One of the biggest things about it is the impact that it has on retention rate. If people are actually going to stick it out in school, it’s because they feel that sense of oneness with their kin, and it has direct correlation with how often they feel involved. We are not dealing with business degrees, and that’s not to say that God’s calling on their life is not to that, but for people that are stepping into this school, it is because they see themselves in vocational ministry. And if they do, that means that they have a specific call to it, and if they’re here, they’re getting trained specifically for it.
“The reason I think that student life is impactful is because at the end of the day, what they want to hear is, ‘Well done, thou good and faithful servant.’ This is a pivotal part of them ever stepping into that call. If they don’t have the ability to feel connected – if they don’t have anybody that is saying to them, ‘Hey! You can do this. You’re a part of something bigger than yourself and you are with us and we’re for you’ – it can have a huge impact on whether they actually finish or not. Student life, in a small way, is helping people to achieve the calling of God on their life.
“The students come together for school, but they don’t stay together because of school. You never know the importance of friends – the importance of community – until you lack it completely. It’s correlated to student life because there’s community. You never want to get to the point where you need help and you don’t have any because you haven’t sowed into that. That’s probably one of the biggest things about student life. If you want to make friends, you need to be a friend. If you want to make friends, you need to go out and you need to get outside of your comfort zone. Ultimately, student life is the life of a student. It is happening regardless of whether it’s being captured or not, and it is happening regardless of whether it’s being enhanced or not. I think it’s so important because we here at Manna U want to enhance it.”
